False Memories
by Charmed-Triquetra
Summary: Four years after the battle with Doomsday, Lois Lane learns a secret that will change her life forever Chlois, Chlark


**_A/N_**_- This is set in my own version of post-season 8 Smallville, where the Chlois Theory is proven true (Chloe = the real Lois). If you are angered by the Chlois Theory, do not read this story. Otherwise, enjoy! This is my first Smallville futurefic, so constructive criticism is welcome._

"Save and... print."

With a final click of her mouse, Lois Lane sat back in triumph and waited for her printer to wake up and print her article. After weeks of backbreaking research, near death situations and fingers that were now worn down to the bone, she had finally completed her article on the new state senator. Although, once this story hit the stands, he wouldn't be senator for long. Sex, scandal, death and debauchery. This story had it all.

Lois sighed with satisfaction. It was stories like these that she had dreamt about writing since she was an idealistic teenage journalist working at her high school newspaper... spending hours of her free time working to expose scandal within her small town world, the rest of her day being a blur of yellow and red...

_What?_ Lois snapped herself out her reminiscing. _Red and yellow?_

Flashes of random images flew through her mind. Alternate red and yellow lockers, light flooding in through high windows, a silhouette of a bird... a crow?

As fast as the images appeared, they fluttered away before she could grasp onto them and decode them. As far as she was aware, none of them made any sense: her high school had been blue and green, sterile and official... and their mascot had been a bulldog. Similar to the university, where she got her long awaited degree in Journalism. Despite losing a few years because of that worldwide blackout that had caused the riots that destroyed Met U. She remembered that day clearly, being trapped in the basement of the Daily Planet...

_Impossible_. Lois shook her head involuntarily. She wasn't anywhere near the Daily Planet on Dark Thursday. She had been visiting her father that day. She remembered him bundling her out of the way before ordering his troop to go out and establish some order in the rioting streets.

Where were all of these thoughts coming from? She must have been suffering from sleep deprivation again, if she was suddenly concocting false memories. She reached out for the coffee that Jimmy Olsen, the photographer, had brought her when he was angling for larger font for his photo credit. She had laughed with him and threatened to bludgeon him with her stapler if he didn't hand over the coffee, as she usually did. She took a sip of a her coffee, only to realise that it had gone cold. She put it down with disgust and stretched out her arms, preparing to stand up and get a new batch of caffeine to add to her system.

"Lane!" Perry White's voice boomed through the Daily Planet as he walked over to Lois. She dropped her outstretched arms towards the printer and quickly organised the printed article. She was about to hold it out to Perry for him to grab and read without breaking a stride, like he normally did, but stopped dead when she saw the man behind him.

There wasn't much remarkable about this man to Lois' eyes, but for some reason he had grabbed her attention like a child on chocolate. He was dressed in a mundane grey suit, filled with enough starch to allow it to stand up on its own, and wearing huge 1980s style glasses with black frames and lenses so thick that they could easily be misconstrued as double glazing. He held an expression of deep concentration, laced with anxiety, as though he were putting all his effort into not falling flat on his face. And with the way he walked, it didn't seem like a very irrational concern.

Still... there was something about him that Lois found incredibly fascinating... almost attractive. Not in a sexual manner, more in a way that made her feel drawn to him, like there was a thick cord connecting them.

It took her a second to register that Perry was waiting for a response while he stood before her with the bumbling reporter behind him. She blinked and checked her papers unnecessarily before looking back up at her editor,

"Yes, Chief?"

"Lois Lane, this is Clark Kent."

The nervous guy smiled at her shyly.

"Mr Kent is your new partner- I want you to show him the ropes. I hope this will be the beginning of a great partnership. Is that your article on the Senator?"

New. Partner. Lois sat, stunned. Aside from Jimmy Olsen as her sometime-photographer, she worked alone. It had been that way for a while... so why was Perry suddenly pairing her off? She couldn't tell whether to be pleased or offended.

Suddenly realising that her work was being called to attention, she wordlessly held up her article for Perry, who took it and headed back to his office to read over. Despite her initial shock, she didn't miss the strange look exchanged between Clark and Perry. Almost as though they were sharing a secret... what had they been discussing in his office?

The new guy, this Clark Kent, sat in the chair opposite Lois and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose,

"It's nice to meet you... Lois."

His tone seemed odd, Lois registered. Like he felt weird uttering her name...

_A flash of a tunnel. Growling. Screams. A girl running._

"_Lois!"_

"_Clark, go after her!"_

Lois blinked with surprise. Where had that come from? She quickly took a gulp of her coffee, grimacing as the cold slush went down her throat. She turned her attention back to her new partner,

"Nice to meet you too." She took a beat to assess Clark Kent once more. Beneath his Coke-bottle glasses were astonishingly deep green eyes that took her by surprise. But what surprised Lois more was that she felt like she had stared into those green eyes before. Many, many times. Her heart suddenly panged with longing, as though she were a high school freshman staring into the eyes of the young boy she hoped would someday be her boyfriend.

_What the hell?_ Lois suddenly felt a desperate urge to refill her coffee. She had to get away from this man. Clark watched her as she stood up, making her feel even more uneasy about him and feeling an even greater need to put some distance between them. In her haste to grab her coffee mug, she knocked it off the table instead.

"Lois, watch out!" Clark called out and jumped to his feet.

"_Lois, watch out!" a girl's voice called out. Her voice was laced with terror and exhaustion as she ran towards the retreating form. A strong arm grabbed onto her wrist._

"_Chloe, it's too dangerous." She whirled around to face the man who addressed her, her eyes clouding with tears,_

"_Clark, we have to do something. If Doomsday sees her-"_

"_I'll stop him."_

"_I'm the only one who can stop him from killing. I'm sorry."_

_The girl called Chloe pulled out a green rock from her bag and shoved it in Clark's pocket. He groaned and crumpled to the ground. He looked up at Chloe with terrified, sad eyes, silently begging her to take back what she had done._

"_I have to save her, Clark. I'm not going to risk you too." Chloe ran down the tunnel, screaming Lois' name,_

"_Lois! Lois!"_

"Lois?" Clark asked again, trying to get her attention. Snapping out of her daze, Lois looked at Clark, who stood in front of her with her mug in his hand. Fully intact. She took it from him and gave it a quick inspection,

"Nice save, Kent. That was..."

"Well, I have fast reflexes." He shrugged modestly.

"Yeah, but to get around the desk that fast? Did you take a shortcut through-"

"_-a black hole?"_

_She stood by a red and yellow school bus. A boy standing next to her laughed at the sheepish looking boy before them. A boy who looked a lot like-_

"Are you alright?" Clark made an attempt to look into her eyes. Lois looked back at him. The concern etched on his face was unmistakable... but he looked far more worried than he should be for someone he had just met.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." Lois said, almost trying to convince herself more than Clark. Suddenly, a question burned in her throat, and she had no choice but to ask,

"Have we... met before? This all just seems really familiar."

For a moment, Clark seemed almost alarmed. As though he had suddenly become naked in the centre of Metropolis. As though someone had taken his biggest secret and displayed it on a neon sign in the centre of New York City. Clark shook his head almost too forcefully,

"N-no. Never. I doubt we would have crossed paths... I grew up in a farm town in Kansas. Small-"

"_-ville? This is about Clark?!" Lois shouted incredulously._

"_Yes. No... Lois, just trust me. You need to get out of here, now." Chloe cried out over the growling that was fast approaching. She was going to save Lois and Clark if her life depended on it. She was going to sacrifice herself for the world. As she was destined to._

_A shadow loomed over Lois, who looked up past Chloe in terror. Chloe slowly turned around and saw the monster before her. _

_Doomsday._

"What?" Clark said with surprise.

"What?" Lois asked. What had she done to suddenly alienate this guy?

"You just said 'Doomsday'."

"I did?"

"Yes. Is that some deadline slang that I don't know about?" Clark asked, looking confused. Lois stared at him blankly, not sure whether or not her mutism was voluntary. She stared into Clark's eyes once more, seeing the worry and anxiety spelled out in the sea of green. It was then that she knew she had to get out of there. Away from him.

However, she hadn't accounted for the spilled coffee that Clark had not been able to rescue from the floor. She was facing the ceiling before she even realised what was going on. It took a minute before she realised that she had not hit the ground. As he had been with the coffee mug, Clark had grabbed her before the back of her head had smacked the floor. Realising that her body had tensed in preparation for her fall, she relaxed in Clark's arms as he looked down at her, the soft light from the Daily Planet energy savers gathered around his face like an angel's halo.

"_Dead. I must be. I'm looking up at an angel." Chloe found herself murmuring. Her head pounded heavily, most likely from being thrown across the quarry. The angel stroked her face and pulled her nearer to him. His face came into focus._

"_Chloe, you're not dead. It's Clark."_

"_Clark?" Chloe's voice cracked as she tried to speak louder for him to hear her. Which she realised was ridiculous. It was more likely that she was raising her voice to reassure herself that she was alive._

"_Yes. Oh, thank God you're alive."_

"_Where's Doomsday?"_

"_He's gone." He smiled weakly, as though trying to silently reassure Chloe that everything would be okay._

"_Where's Lois?" Chloe asked. She attempted to cradle her neck to look for her cousin, but Clark's face obstructed a lot of her view and it hurt her head to try and see beyond him. She looked to Clark for an answer, but he looked back at her with nothing but sadness in his eyes. There was nothing to say. Chloe knew what had happened._

"_No..."_

Lois blinked back tears as she reached up to Clark's face and pulled away his glasses. He didn't blink to help his eyes adjust to a lack of vision, and it didn't surprise her one bit. She knew he didn't need them. Putting the glasses on the floor beside her, she reached up and touched his face. A tear trickled down her cheek.

"Clark?"

"Chloe?"

***

"You don't need to wear the glasses." Chloe stated as she sipped her double cappuccino and studied Clark. He barely looked different to how she remembered him... it amazed her that it took her longer that two seconds to recognise him. A fact that he was going to explain soon. Starbucks probably wasn't the most appropriate of places to go for this conversation, but Clark had insisted that they go to a source of caffeine. He was clearly buttering her up so that she wouldn't be furious with him. So far, it seemed to be working.

Clark touched the frames protectively,

"I'm following the advice you gave me. I need an alter ego."

"What? Nerd-Man?" Chloe grinned as Clark gave her a look that conveyed sticking out his tongue. Then he gave his own cryptic grin,

"You'll see."

A silence fell between them as they both thought about the one subject that neither of them wanted to talk about, but desperately needed to. Chloe took a deep breath and decided to be the one to break the ice,

"Clark, why didn't I remember who I was?"

Clark didn't look up from his latte, knowing that Chloe was already making up her mind to be mad at him, and he was happy with the current arrangement of her just being happy to see him. However, he knew he couldn't delay the inevitable. They couldn't just sit there in silence.

"I... erased your memory." Clark winced, waiting for the yelling. Instead, Chloe just took another sip of her coffee.

"Yes, Clark, I had already figured that out. What I'm fuzzy on is the why. Why did I spend years as my late cousin?" Chloe wanted to say more, but a clenching in her throat stopped her. It had obviously been a while since she thought about her cousin's death and she hadn't dealt with it. Mostly because she didn't remember her. And now that she did, all the pain she had felt that day came rushing back.

"_Clark?" Chloe looked up at her best friend, pleading._

"_I'm so sorry." Clark's face showed evidence of tears. Chloe couldn't deny the truth any longer. She used her remaining strength to climb out of Clark's arms. Despite his better judgement, he let her go and she stumbled forward. A few feet away from her lay the body of her cousin. Falling forward, she collapsed by Lois' side and pulled her into her arms._

"_Lois? Lois, come on! Please wake up." Chloe knew that her begging was fruitless as her cousin's body sagged in her arms. She was gone. She died saving her. Chloe had tried to save Davis Bloome from himself, but it hadn't worked. Doomsday had taken over and was in a murderous rage. She could see it in his eyes. After what she did, he wanted to kill her._

_She hadn't even seen it coming. One minute, he was about to claw her into oblivion, the next she was flying through the air and hearing her cousin scream in pain. She had jumped into the line of fire to save her._

"I sent Doomsday to the Phantom Zone." Clark said quietly. "There was no redeeming him and we couldn't kill him, so I sent him there. But he swore that, if he ever escaped, he would come for us."

"Because we kissed." Chloe added with shame. In the heat of the moment, Clark had professed his love for Chloe to convince her to stay out of the battle. But it had only convinced her to stay involved to protect Clark. She had returned his love and they shared a kiss. A kiss filled with years of unfulfilled love and compassion that could only be expressed one way. When Davis caught them, he flew into a rage. In that moment, Davis Bloome died and Doomsday was ready to kill.

"If he ever does escape, I know he'll find me easily." Clark continued, "but I had to protect you."

"So you took my memory and convinced me that I was Lois?" Chloe picked at the muffin in front of her, "But what about her grave?"

"I asked her father to put your name on the tombstone and your name on the list of the dead."

"So, to the world, Chloe Sullivan died that day." Chloe completed the sentence. Clark nodded,

"I took you to the Fortress. You were beside yourself with grief. Broken. It broke my heart to see you that. So I asked Jor El to erase your memories-"

"And replace them with a whole other life." Chloe finished Clark's sentence once again.

"I wanted to protect you from the pain and being found if Doomsday ever returned."

"Then why did you come to me, Clark?" Chloe asked, now noticing a missing part of the puzzle, "If you wanted to protect me, why did you get a job where I worked and trigger my memory?"

Clark reached out and held Chloe's hand. He took a deep breath, knowing that this admission will be just as difficult as he envisioned,

"Chloe, I want to say that I know that it's safe for us again. But I don't know that. And I wish I could say that this all happened by accident. But it didn't."

"So, what are you saying, Clark?"

"It's been four years and I cannot bear not having you in my life." As Chloe stared at him with a mixture of surprise and hope, Clark's heart pounded like a sledgehammer as he continued, "I watched you from afar all this time and it killed me to not be able to..."

This time, Chloe's voice came out as a whisper, for she feared that using her voice would reveal that she was close to tears,

"Clark?"

"I said it to you four years ago. And I'm telling you today. Chloe, I love you. I always have and I always will. And being away from you this long has made me realise that I never want to be away from you again. I can only hope that you'll forgive me for what I did."

Chloe looked at him, letting this information sink in. From the broken pieces of her true memory, she realised that she had always felt this way about him. It also dawned on her that she used to be married to her sometimes-photographer. But that was something she would deal with later. Right now, the centre of her universe was Clark Kent.

Without consciously realising what she was doing, Chloe slid off her seat and walked over to Clark's side of the table. He looked up at her, his eyes glistening with tears. Now recognising what she wanted to do, Chloe removed Clark's glasses and stroked the side of his face, taking in everything about him, soaking in every aspect of her best friend in case she was ever made to forget him ever again. She would make sure to make this a lasting memory. Clark closed his eyes and felt the sparks between the two of them, remembering how wonderful it was to have her so close to him again. Soon, he felt her lips press against his and his heart jumped for joy. He put his arms around her waist and effortlessly pulled her onto his lap.

Together, they shared the kiss that they were meant to have all those years ago. No Doomsday, no death, no torment. Just Clark, Chloe and their love.

Of course, now, it was Clark and Lois.

At the Daily Planet. Partners. Best friends. Lovers.

A new chapter had begun.


End file.
